Garrett Muscatel, a Dartmouth student and a Democratic candidate for the New Hampshire house of representatives, stands outside the campus’s historic library.
Photograph: Oliver Laughland for the Guardian

Among the symmetrically mown lawns and grand homes of suburban New Hampshire, Garrett Muscatel was knocking on doors to talk about a subject that took many by surprise: voter suppression.

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At just 20 years old, this student at Dartmouth College is vying to become the youngest member of the state’s 400-person house of representatives in November’s midterm elections. But, so he told potential voters in this precinct, what is at stake was not just the beginning of his political career but the future of democracy in the Granite state.

“Hi, my name is Garrett,” he told one woman in her 60s, tending to her barking dog. “I’m a student here at Dartmouth and I’m running for office. Did you know much about laws Republicans have passed that make it harder for people like me to vote?”

She hadn’t heard much. But agreed that turning up to vote, even in a heavily Democratic precinct like this one, was important in the Trump era.

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The swing state of New Hampshire is known for its first in-the-country presidential primaries and high turnout due to its same-day voter registration law. But over the past two years, since the 2016 election ushered in a Republican-controlled state government, the state has quietly become a major battlefield in the fight over voting rights in America.

Shortly after winning the presidential election, Donald Trump reportedly claimed, without evidence, that he lost New Hampshire due to the “bussing in” of “thousands” of out-of-state voters. Kris Kobach – the chair of Trump’s short-lived voter fraud commission and one of the principal architects of modern day voter suppression – has also made similarly outlandish and false claims.

In the past two years Republicans have passed two bills that Democrats argue target the voting rights of many of New Hampshire’s roughly 90,000 college students. The state senate passed a bill, SB3, that required voters to provide detailed documentation proving they had “domiciled” in the state, with potential fines of up to $5,000 if the lengthy forms are filled out incorrectly. Earlier this week the law was struck down in state court.

In 2017, Republicans passed further legislation, HB 1264, that added a residency requirement to voter registration. This means, for example, that out-of-state students who drive will have to pay hundreds of dollars for a new driver’s license, travelling sometimes dozens of miles to a local DMV office to complete the process, if they want to vote.

Republicans argue the measures are necessary to safeguard the integrity of the ballot box. But Muscatel pointed to his own background as an indication of the effect the laws could have on student voters.

Born and raised in California, he came to Dartmouth after falling in love with the university during a campus tour in the middle of a snowstorm. His decision to run for office underpins a desire to remain in the state after graduation.

“These bills are designed to make sure that no matter how enthusiastic students are, they won’t be able to have their voices heard,” he said in an interview at Dartmouth’s historic Baker-Berry library. “It’s a poll tax.”

New Hampshire Democrats have vowed to repeal HB 1264, which does not come into effect until 2019, if they take back the state legislature in this year’s midterms.

Although historically associated with disenfranchising communities of colour, voter suppression laws in the US have extended to affect student communities across America. During the 2016 election voter ID laws in states including Wisconsin, Florida and Texas were, according to critics, designed to suppress the student vote.

In New Hampshire, where students make up a sizable, left leaning voting bloc, the new laws represent perhaps the most concerted attempt anywhere in the country to roll back access to the franchise among young people.

“New Hampshire’s history on this issue stands out,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, a counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice’s democracy program. “There has been a particularly heavy focus on passing laws that affect the student population of New Hampshire.”

Republicans who back the legislation maintain that it is necessary to prevent widespread voter fraud of the ilk described by Trump. Sherman Packard, the Republican party’s deputy house speaker and HB 1264’s main sponsor, said any comparison to a poll tax was “a total bunch of BS”. He pointed to a split decision, along partisan lines, from the state’s supreme court that found the law was constitutional.

Sherman Packard, a Republican member of the New Hampshire house of representatives, stands by the statehouse’s display of historic battle flags. Photograph: Oliver Laughland for the Guardian

But pressed for specific, proven examples of such fraudulent voting practice, Packard drew a blank.

He described an alleged incident in 2016, where he claimed an unnamed GOP colleague witnessed a busload of students voting in the town of Hooksett. His colleague was reportedly told that some of the students had come from “Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, I forget which” and had been told by an unidentified university professor to come to vote in New Hampshire because “our vote meant more here”.

Asked if the alleged incident was ever investigated or if he could name any of the alleged culprits, Packard responded: “Well yeah, I mean they couldn’t prove anything. But it is a significant issue.”

The response might sound startling vague, but state-commissioned research also indicates that the issue of voter fraud in New Hampshire is negligible.

New Hampshire is part of Kobach’s controversial Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, which aims to prevent voter fraud by cross-referencing voter rolls with those in other states, flagging duplicate names. The system, which has been heavily criticized for producing thousands of mismatches, flagged almost 95,000 potential cases in New Hampshire in 2016, prompting a state investigation. Earlier in the year it was revealed that just 51 of those cases were referred to the attorney general’s office for investigation - the overwhelming majority were confirmed as false flags.

Will Pearson, a Democratic member of the house of representatives, who sits on the election law committee said Packard’s inability to name a substantiated case of voter fraud in the state underlined the legislation’s true intent.

Will Pearson, a Democratic member of the New Hampshire house of representatives, sits on the floor of the 19th-century house chamber. Photograph: Oliver Laughland for the Guardian

“Republicans in this state have realized that the more people voting, the less chance that they’re going to hold a majority,” he said, seated in the house chamber of New Hampshire’s 19th-century state house. “There is no compelling state interest for this. There is no voter fraud.”

There are already signs that the effort to cut turnout may have backfired. The recent court ruling in the SB3 case means no new restrictive laws will be in effect in November. And primaries last month also saw a surge in youth voter participation.

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At Dartmouth University, Garrett Muscatel said he would focus the majority of his campaign on repealing HB 1264. He was preparing to face off against another student, 20-year-old Republican Baronet Harrington, in the November midterms. Harrington, an editor of the rightwing campus paper the Dartmouth Review, which has launched the careers of noted conservatives including Dinesh D’Souza and Laura Ingraham, did not respond to multiple interview requests for this article.

Dartmouth College also declined to make a spokesperson available for interview but issued a statement: “Dartmouth is opposed to any legislation that makes it more difficult for our students to vote in New Hampshire.”

Despite his opponent’s seeming reticence to fully engage with the issue, Muscatel said he was focused on making his campaign a positive one. He recalled being present, as a nine-year-old, at Barack Obama’s first inauguration in January 2009.

“It was like being surrounded by 1 million other people ready for change, to make this country a better place. It was still an amazing experience,” he said. “From then on I knew I wanted to be involved in making this country a better place.”